


Stranded

by 9r7g5h



Series: Creampuff Week [6]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Creampuff Week, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 23:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4412267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9r7g5h/pseuds/9r7g5h
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All they could do was wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranded

**Author's Note:**

> AN: And here’s the second to last fic for Creampuff Week, and by far the fic that hurt me the most to write. First, I wrote it in one night, from 1 am to 6:30 am. Then, autoplay on youtube kept playing the heartbreaking songs while I was writing heartbreaking moments, which didn’t make thing any better. And at first I had no clue what was going to happen, and then this popped out and ruined me. Still, I hope you all enjoy, and are having a fabulous Creampuff Week!
> 
> PS, the info within the fic came from Redcross and general google searches, so yeah. I tried to be as accurate as I could, so hopefully I succeeded!
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Carmilla. U by Kotex does.

Perhaps it was the water monster currently picking pieces of their boat out from between its teeth, perhaps it was the beating sun and the burning sand as they all scrambled onto the little island, or perhaps it was even the fact that they had no food, no clean water, and no way home, but this little expedition was starting to seen a bit misplanned to them.

Or, as Danny so nicely put it, “We’re so screwed.”

When JP had told them about the island in the middle of the lake about half a mile off campus, they had been curious. No one had ever set foot on it, as far as JP had been able to figure out, and rumors had been floating around it for centuries. Some claimed it had buried treasure, some a weapon beyond all imaginable power without the usual evil side effects, and others had just pointed out that its semi-secluded environment was sure to have interesting flora and fauna. Either way, it was a mystery that no one had been able to figure out, despite the yearly expeditions that had gone on from the day the school opened until the President of the Board, Mattie just under a different name back then, put a stop to them in the early 1900s.

For a biologist like them, it was a gold mine. And after a bit of needling, they’d been able to convince both Danny and Carmilla to accompany them (the former because she was jumping on anything that might help them win this war, and the latter because Laura would be so impressed if she helped out without being forced to do so, wouldn’t she? They played a dirty game, they knew it, but when the vampire had closed her book and left to change into something more suitable for their expedition, LaF hadn’t really cared).

With one of the strongest warriors in the Summer Society and one of the strongest people on campus on their side, LaF had been sure that they would get to the island and be able to take care of anything that came their way. Protected by their friends, they would be able to collect samples to their little heart’s desire, all without having to worry about being attacked from behind for once.

They packed enough food, water, and changes of clothes for two weeks, told Perry and the others that they’d be back shortly after those two weeks were up, and set off on their little expedition, the three of them excited- and slightly grumpy, though they and Danny mostly ignored Carmilla’s pout at having to leave her girlfriend behind- for what would await.

That excitement was significantly decreased now that fish were eating their rations and they all had wet socks.

“I think screwed is the least of it, Xena,” Carmilla snapped as she tried to wring water out of her hair, the normally pristine gentle curls now a matted mess. Glaring at the spot where the creature, finally done with its meal of their boat, had sunk below the waves, she shook her head and growled, teeth bared in what would have been threatening if she hadn’t looked like a drowned cat. “No wonder Mattie closed this island off. Who the hell leaves a kraken in the middle of a lake?”

“Was that what that was,” LaF butt in, cutting off the snarky comment they could see forming on Danny’s tongue, their quick, warning glance just enough to stop her. ‘Be nice,’ they mouthed as Danny flopped down onto the sand, removing her shoes and pouring out the excess water.

With their boat destroyed and their things lost, the last thing the three of them needed to be doing was arguing.

“Maybe,” Carmilla said with a shrug, using the motion to help her slip out of the over shirt she’d been wearing, leaving her just in her normal black tank. “Krakens are a separate species in and of themselves, but the term’s come to mean any big water creature that wants to eat you. Not that it matters,” she grumbled, twisting the shirt to try and get the water out. “Either way, kiddos, we’re stuck until the others come get us. And that’s hoping they don’t meet Nessie over there like we did.”

“What do you think brought it out,” Danny asked as she stood, barefoot on the wet sand, shoes in hand. Leaning over to grab a piece of wood, she sighed as she examined it- a generally shapeless, almost square piece. No good as a weapon, but maybe kindling for later, once it’d dried out.

“It might be territorial,” LaF said with a shrug, taking a few steps back out into the water to grab a backpack. Opening it up, a brief wave of disappointment swept through them; there was nothing useful in the bag, only the rope and duct tape they had brought for the samples they had hoped to take home. Without their coolers and slides, though, it seemed as if that was quickly becoming a pipe dream. Shaking their head, they threw the backpack over their shoulder and returned to the shore- this close to land, it was unlikely that anything as big as the thing that had attacked them would be able to get close enough for a second strike, but there was no point in risking it. “Our boat might have been big enough to set off some alarms. It probably thought we were intruders trying to steal its hunting grounds.” Coming to stand next to the others, it was with a shrug that they dropped the bag and stared out at the water with them, watching as the few things that had stayed afloat at first began to sink beneath the waves. “At least, that would be my guess.”

“We should start making camp,” Danny eventually said, interrupting the silence that had fallen over the three. “I don’t know about you guys, but my phone was in my bag, and even if it wasn’t, this water would have ruined it. Without a boat, we’re stuck until the others notice we’ve been gone for too long, and come to get us. Might as well get a fire going and collect some of those fruit.” At her mention of food, Carm and LaF turned to stare at the strange, blueish orbs that hung from the nearest tree. While Carmilla’s nose wrinkled in disgust, LaFontaine’s face lit up as they stumbled through the sand, jumping under the tree for a minute until they could grab one of the low hanging fruits.

“It’s almost like an overgrown blueberry,” LaFontaine said slowly, running their hands over the thick skin and sniffing the fruit, chewing on their bottom lip. “It could be okay, but I can’t be sure…” Their voice trailing off, they glanced up at the others, shrugged, and took a bite, their face wrinkling as their teeth sunk into the strange food.

“LaFontaine,” Danny admonished in a scary impression of Perry, “What do you think you’re doing? That could be poisoned or-“

“Or absolutely delicious,” LaFontaine laughed, licking at their suddenly purple lips. “Tastes like an overgrown blueberry too, though also like lemons and oranges?” Taking a second bite, they coughed slightly as they rolled the piece around in their mouth, the foreign taste hard to get used to. “That’s definitely an orange,” they confirmed. “And I’m not dead yet, so I think we’re good, until Carmilla can catch us some animals to help round out our meals. Especially on the water part, these suckers worse than watermelons.”

From the purple juice running down their arms and dripping onto the sand, Danny knew she didn’t have to question LaFontaine on that, though she still shook her head at the other’s antics. “We should still see if there’s a stream or something around here,” Danny said, motioning towards the water surrounding them. “This is fresh water, but it’s technically still, and there’s no knowing what’s been growing in it. A river or even a stream would be nice, until we can figure out a way to filter the lake water. And we should also spend some time walking the shore- no clue what’s been washed up on either side of us, and the more we can gather the better. We-“

“Shhh.”

“Wha-“

“I said shut it,” Carmilla snapped, the steel in her voice quieting even Danny, who took a step back as Carmilla turned away from the part of the forest she’d been studying to look at them. Even though her face was calm, there was a sort of panic in her eyes, one unlike any the others had seen before. Licking her lips, she gestured towards the forest besides them. “Listen.”

For a long moment the three of them stood there, the other two straining their ears to hear whatever it was the vampire wanted. Finally, LaFontaine shrugged their shoulders and sighed.

“I don’t get it,” they said. “I’m not hearing anything.”

“Exactly,” Carmilla replied, a slight waver in her voice. “We should be hearing birds, small animals rustling, just something. But we’re not. You’re not, I’m not. It’s quiet. Everywhere.”

It was Danny who caught on first, her face quickly twisting into a horrified look as she pieced together the puzzle, LaFontaine quickly following behind. Swallowing hard, Danny took a step back from the vampire, her hand tightening around the wooden slab she had found. “There’s no animals on this island, are there?” She kept her words steady, though her posture shifted slightly into a defensive one, her gaze hardening on the other woman. “There’s nothing for you to eat here, is there?”

Carmilla’s hollow laugh at her words only confirmed what they had all realized.

“Nothing but the two of you and the blood bags that’re at the bottom of the lake. And as a growing young vampire who needs at least a full liter a day…”  
She didn’t need to finish. They all knew what she meant, all knew the calculations she’d already done, and didn’t need her to say them for her.

“We’re fucked,” was all LaFontaine could say as a bitter laugh left Danny.

*

By the end of their first day there their shelter was done, a pile of (hopefully) ripe fruit was stacked around the little fire they had built, and a plan was half drawn in the sand, one they hoped would end with all three of them getting out of there alive.

“Nine days,” Carmilla had said between snapping tree trunks in half, separating the rotten limbs for kindling from what was good enough to be incorporated into their little ‘hut.’ It was nothing, really, just a handful of thin trunks from young trees buried deep into the sand, tied together with some extra clothing that had washed up they’d been able to find and covered with blankets weighed down by rocks, but it was the best they had. “Last time you idiots tied me up and starved me, I went nine days before the seizures started.”

“You probably would have been okay for ten, maybe eleven if we had pushed it,” LaFontaine had thrown in, “but anything after that, and we’re pushing it too far. You’re a badass vampire, yeah,” they had continued, pausing every few words as the fruit they were collecting tried to escape their grasp, forcing them to return to their main task, “but I honestly have no clue how you work, and going past your limits like that could cause some serious damage. Something I think we all would like to avoid.”

“Which is why we should be prioritizing getting off this island,” Danny had huffed, dragging the support beams Carmilla had broken to the spot they had chosen as their camp.

“You want to go up against whatever stranded us here in a makeshift raft, by my guest,” Carmilla had quickly pointed out, the general tone of victory whenever she pointed out some logical flaw in Danny’s plans gone. “Our best bet is to just wait it out until the others come and get us.”

“And to do that,” LaF had said determinedly, “we need to figure this out. We have to survive fifteen days, the fourteen we said we’d be gone and the one it’s going to take for the others to get to us.”

Which, after hours of arguing and working and trying to figure something else out, had led them to this plan- use Carmilla until their third day there, tie her up to the largest tree they could find, let her gorge herself on as much of their blood as she could drink without making them pass out, and then hope she could hang on until rescue came.

It was risky- she could theoretically easily break free, lose control of herself in her hunger, and kill the two of them in their sleep. She could die from the lack of substance, the twelve days they were hoping to push her just too much for her to live through. The others might come and get stuck on this little island with them or, even worse, might never come at all.

It was all hinging on the idea that their friends would come, and come quickly.  
But it was the best they could do, and with a lack of anything better, it was all they could.

*

Although she waved off their concern, it didn’t take a biologist to tell that Carmilla was hurting, and LaFontaine was one. Four days without proper food (she had explained, half way through one of the bloranges, as they had named them, that normal food did nothing for her. She enjoyed the taste, liked the feeling of something solid in her stomach, but pizza and cookies were as good for her as dirt and sand were for a normal person. Meaning they weren’t, and did nothing to stave off the hunger) would be straining for anyone, and it had shown. She’d been slower lately, visibly struggling to lift what she had once picked up with a single hand back at Silas, and she was slower to wake when they needed her, her eyes heavy with exhaustion as they worked.

Even as she waved off their concern as they tied her to the tree, one even she had admitted in her weakened state she’d have no chance of breaking, with enough rope to immobilize an elephant, the reminder that she would soon have her fill excited her, her eyes dark like a predator’s.

“I still don’t see why we can’t just feed her a little bit every day,” Danny said with a sigh as she checked one of the knots, roughly tugging on it to make sure it wouldn’t give anytime soon. “That seems more reasonable than stuffing her and hoping she lives.”

“It would,” LaFontaine agreed, picking at one of the rolls of duct tape to get it started, “if there were more of us. You’ve donated blood, right?”

“Yeah, every year, during the Blood Festivals the lunch ladies run. Best way to get free movie tickets.”

“Well,” LaFontaine said after a moment, grinning as the tip of the duct tape finally came loose, “when you donate blood, they take at most a liter of blood, which is just over four cups, or about a thousand milliliters. Most places only take half of that. Now, generally,” LaFontaine said, keeping their tone conversational as they walked around the tree, taping Carmilla in place over the rope, shooting her an apologetic look with every pass, “the plasma in our blood restores itself within twenty-four hours. If it was just the plasma that was being taken, then your plan would work. We could just switch off between the two of us and things would be good. But-“

“But it’s the red blood cells I need,” Carmilla interrupted, her head leaned back and her eyes closed, giving the impression that she was just relaxing, had she not been covered in ropes and duct tape. “Don’t know why, just do.”

“I have some interesting theories for that that we can go over when we get back to campus,” LaFontaine said casually, as if they were discussing lunch plans for the next week. “Red blood cells, on the other hand, take six to eight weeks to regenerate. Even if Carmilla only drank a cup a day from the two of us, we wouldn’t be replacing it fast enough to keep up, and within a few days we’d need transfusions ourselves.”

“And I can’t even promise I’d only take a cup,” Carmilla said with a sigh, shrugging the best that she could all tied up. “Starve someone for long enough, and they tend to binge eat when they’re able.”

“And we don’t have a knife we could use to cut ourselves, or anything to collect the blood in, or anyway to properly treat the wounds after. At least this way, Carmilla’s saliva will close up the wounds-another property I need to study when we get off of this island-, we can spend the rest of the day relaxing, and the chances of the two of us dying from blood loss is almost none,” LaFontaine finished, continuing their circle around the tree with the remains of the first roll of tape. “This is the best way to get us all home alive. It sucks,” they said, throwing the empty cardboard duct tape ring over their shoulder and grabbing another, “but at the moment it’s all we’ve got.”

“I don’t like it,” Danny grumbled, though after that she kept her mouth shut.  
By the time they were done, almost fifty yards of rope and five rolls of duct tape were wrapped around Carmilla, making her look more like a cocoon than a human. She couldn’t move, not even an inch, and her glare (not at them, but at the situation in general), was enough to make the two of them feel safe, if a bit guilty.

“Here,” Danny said gruffly, rolling up her sleeve and holding her arm up to Carmilla’s mouth. She winced and hissed as Carmilla bit deep into her inner forearm, the strange sucking sensation almost enough to make her jerk away, though she stopped herself after a momentary flinch. “Drink up, Fang Face,” she said softly so Lafontaine couldn’t hear. “I give you grief, but it would kind of suck if you died. Laura’d cry for weeks if you did, I’m sure. And you’re okay to have, in a pinch.”

“I do believe,” Carmilla said a few minutes later, running her tongue against the wounds to speed up their closing and to lap up the last few drops she would be getting from Danny, her voice stronger after the first half of her meal, “that that was the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Xena. You do care.”

“Shut up and save your strength. You’re going to need it.”

*

It was day seven that gave them something.

Every day they two of them had been walking the beach- there was nothing else to do other than lie in the sand and eat bloranges, and after an entire week of spending most of the day doing that, neither of the could stand the idea of spending an entire one doing the exact same thing over again. So it was either walk the beaches or go visit Carmilla, who, when they did come to visit, if they didn’t have a topic of conversation already picked out, would spend the visits talking about the past. About the places she had been and the people she had met, about the world changing events she had witnessed and the day to day ways to live that had changed in the past century.

There was a sad wistfulness to her words whenever told these stories, as if she had actually given up this time, and neither of them could stand it. It was Laura she was supposed to be telling these stories to, curled up on a couch during a rainy day, cuddled together under blankets, the past just one of the many topics they shared. Not while tied to a tree, slowly starving because they had wanted to find a new type of bug.

So around the beach they went, and it was on one of these walks that they found the cooler they had packed with ice and blood bags before leaving campus, the top opened and the ice melted but still full of bags.

LaFontaine knew it was no use, knew that after a week of being open the blood would have spoiled in the heat, but even so, the sight of the bags still forced a little bud of hope into their chest. Carmilla just needed blood- no one had ever said vampires needed it to be fresh.

But the moment they tore open the top, Carmilla watching hungrily from her rope and tape cocoon, they all knew. The smell was horrid- Danny gagged and almost dropped the bag, and while Carmilla tried it, tried to take a sip that might prove it was still okay, it clearly wasn’t. She spit it out a second later, heaving, a small amount of bile following as her body rejected what she had tried to put into it.

A piece of fruit to clear the taste out of her mouth and a bowl-really just a piece of bark from one of the larger trees, but enough to carry water to the waiting woman- of water to clean the puke from her hair and skin later, and Carmilla was done with seeing them. A quick word of thanks for trying before she went back to sleep, how she spent most of her time these days when she wasn’t trying to give her past to them.

It was day seven they went back to hoping things would be okay.

*

It was day eleven that the seizure happened, two days earlier than they had been hoping.

“It’s the heat,” LaFontaine explained as they poured water over her head and down her neck, gently touching the piece of duct tape they had had to move to her mouth- when they had brought her fruit earlier in the day she had snapped at them, her hunger momentarily taking over her, actually trying to sink her teeth into the hand that was feeding her. She had pulled herself back together a minute later, eyes wide and apologetic, actually asking them to gag her.

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ She had sounded so tired, so broken, so different from how she had been the last time she had been tied up and starved, they hadn’t been able to refuse her.

They had cup off a piece of the duct tape and moved it to her mouth, where shortly after she had begun to twitch.

“There’s a huge different between being starved in a nice, cool dorm room, tied to comfortable chair, and being tied to a tree in the middle of an island,” LaF continued, shaking their head. “She’s sweating, she’s probably overheating under all this rope and tape, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her back is a mess of wounds from the bark. All of that together,” LaF said, frustrated, “at the most, and I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did.”

“What can we do,” Danny asked, agitated, pacing around the tree they had tied Carmilla to. “We can’t untie her, or she’ll probably attack us at this point. We could easily fend her off, of course, there’s no doubt about that, but we might actually hurt her, and she wouldn’t be able to stand that. We’ve searched this entire island, every single tree, and there’s not a single animal we could feed her.” Dropping to her knees besides LaFontaine, Danny reached out and gently moved a strand of hair away from Carmilla’s neck so the air could get at it. “What do we do?”

“We wait,” LaF said, their tone hollow. “We wait, try to make her as comfortable as we can, and we hope.”

*

Day twelve, Danny tried to turn the tide.

“Wake up, Fang Face.” Her voice was harsh as she ripped the piece of duct tape off of Carmilla’s face, leaving a red mark behind that had Carmilla’s eyes opening, though slowly, sluggishly, as if the very effort was too much for her. Grabbing Carmilla’s face, Danny pressed her wrist to Carmilla’s lips, her face stubborn as she waited for the inevitable pain. “I can’t just sit here and watch you starve to death anymore. Drink, you stupid vampire.” Feeling Carmilla’s lips part, Danny stiffened, her muscles clenching, prepared to let the vampire drink enough to keep her alive, even if it put herself at risk-

And snorted in annoyance as Carmilla weakly whispered “No,” and turned her head away.

“Why not,” Danny growled, forcing her to look at her. It wasn’t hard; there was no way Carmilla could have mustered up the strength to keep her own head fully lifted, much less fight against Danny’s physical demands, but somehow she had resisted feeding, and that pissed her off. “I’m offering my blood to you so you can live, you stupid idiot. Do you really think you’re going to survive three more days without blood? Well, do you?” She was yelling now, almost screaming, her grasp around Carmilla’s jaw bruising as she tried to force her wrist against the vampire’s mouth hard enough to force her to drink, to save herself, to keep herself alive. “Don’t you want to see Laura again? Don’t you?”

“Not,” Carmilla said slowly, barely moving her lips so as to not tempt herself with the blood thrumming through Danny’s veins, so close and openly offered but refused, “if it means killing one of her…one of our friends.”

And then Danny was crying and screaming and cursing her out, loud enough to bring LaFontaine crashing into the mini-clearing, ranting about how much of a stupid of an idiot she was and how they weren’t friends, how they couldn’t be friends when she was keeping her tied up like this, when they were killing her and she was just letting them. How if they were real friends Carmilla would have drunk, and she would have trusted her not to have killed her, and forgiven her if she had, because friends can’t stand to see each other in this much pain. Ranted about how much she hated her, and couldn’t wait until they got off this island so she could eat and they could forget this ever happened and she never had to feel this guilty again.

It was a rant that continued until Danny couldn’t speak through the tears, until she couldn’t keep herself standing and sank into LaFontaine’s arms, her own wrapped around her to keep herself from falling apart as she sobbed. LaFontaine, their own face wet as well, could only rub her back and coo unknowable syllables, words lost from their mind, as they tried to think of something, anything, that could make this better. But it was still three days out until help would arrive, and there was nothing they could do. Nothing to change the past and nothing to hurry along the future, except hold Danny as close as they could and witness everything crumbling around them.

Carmilla just watched, too tired to speak, too tired to try and comfort the people before her, her eyes slipping closed when the view became blurred.

*

Day fifteen, they never came.

They’d have no way of knowing something had gone wrong, LaFontaine would realize that night, the fire cold and the fruit Danny and they had gathered sitting uneaten in their laps. They had said they’d be gone for two weeks, fourteen days, and one extra was nothing. And cut off as they were, the three of them actually didn’t know if their friends were even in a positon to come get them- Silas could be under siege from werewolves or goblins or giant mushrooms again, and they knew nothing. Nothing except what was going on on their little island, and that knowledge was more than painful enough.

This would be something they realized that night, but as the morning passed and the day went on, there would only be this numbness that they couldn’t shake. A hollow despair that ate within them, mirrored back to them from Carmilla’s sunken eyes when they eventually went to tell her the news.

Upon hearing it, Carmilla just stared at them for a few long moments before closing them again, too tired to even keep them open for longer. She had barely spoken the last two days, barely had enough energy to swallow the tiny pieces of blorange they had brought her, barely even enough to acknowledge their presence.

But before they left, Carmilla licked at her lips and said, weakly, in a voice they could barely hear, “Tell Laura…you know.”

Even though they knew she couldn’t see them, they just nodded their head and left. Laura would know, had always known, and LaFontaine would make sure to tell her again.

Because the chances were high that Carmilla wouldn’t be able to.

*

Day twenty-one, they let Carmilla rest.

Day one Carmilla had told them that normal ‘human’ food did nothing for her- all it did was taste good and put some weight in her stomach, nothing more. She didn’t digest it, she didn’t absorb it, nothing. But still they had taken bloranges to her, had gently slipped them between her lips and rubbed her throat to get her swallow reflex to work, believing in the back of their minds that it was somehow helping. That somehow they were doing something to keep her alive, even though they knew it was the exact opposite.

It had been a little piece of misguided hope they had clung to. But three days ago she hadn’t opened her eyes, her chest hadn’t been moving, and even when Danny pricked her finger on a sharp piece of wood and ran the bloody droplet across her lower lip, there had been nothing. Now, three days later, they had to accept it. 

They tore off the tape and untied the ropes, their presence no longer necessary, revealing rope burns from where the bindings had caught cloth and skin. They, for the first time in twenty-one days, pulled her away from the trunk of the tree they had tied her to, neither of them able to keep their stomachs from rolling at the sight of her back, where the cloth had been warn through and the flesh torn from the direct contact with the bark. Open sores and infections covered her- even her vampiric constitution unable to fight them off after almost three weeks of being starved. She was thin, painfully thin, the previously healthy if undead form long since gone.

They laid her down on a blanket, wrapped it around her in some sick attempt to make her comfortable and keep her safe, the two things they had failed at doing, and left.

At day twenty-one they barely talked, barely looked at the horizon, could only just forced themselves to keep their schedule: sleep, eat, walk the perimeter of the island, eat, and sleep again, their entire afternoon thrown off.

At day twenty-one, they gave up.

*

Day twenty-two, five boats appeared on the lake, four attacking the water monster head on while the fifth drove straight towards them, the four familiar faces inhabiting it clear long before they ever landed.

It was the Alchemy Club, Perry explained the moment she stumbled off the boat, pulling LaFontaine into her arms and hugging them close. Some kind of experiment they lost control of again, something dangerous that would have tried to destroy the campus if no one stopped it. Perry explained how they were starting to get worried day sixteen, but then the monster showed up and the Zetas refused to let them borrow a boat until after it was defeated, which took an extra week because people were missing and injured. And then the Summer Society wanted to join in on the rescue mission, and it was the two groups that were fighting the monster now so they could come get them.

And Danny just stood there with Betty in her arms and leaning against Kirsch, who kept babbling on about how good it was to see her again, about how much he’d missed his Sis and damn did they have a lot of training sessions to get caught up on. All while Betty just held her, held her tight and refused to let go, now that they were back together again.

And Laura stood there, looking around, that look on her face when things became complicated and she was still thinking they were so simple, as simple as good and evil without the thousands of shades of gray in between, that look that just made people want to protect her from the reality of things, even though they all knew she could handle it. It was with that look on her face that Laura spoke up, her tone slightly confused and nothing else, unaware of what waited her in the forest.

“Where’s Carmilla?”

They said nothing as they led the group into the woods, their steps weary as, for the last time, they walked the path they had carved out for themselves. It felt strange, taking the others there; it was almost a sacred place by now, somewhere they visited with cut up blorange and bark cups filled with water, not four other people in clean clothing, others who didn’t know what was at the end of their little treck. They tried, tried to warn them, to prepare them for what was going to come, but every time the words started to form they died.

It was something they had to see, if it was something to be believed.

And see they did, for the moment they entered into the clearing it was clear what they were going to find, the form still wrapped and lying where they had left her rest, the trunk of the tree twinged red where she had been bound.

Laura took a single half step forward before pulling up short, her hands shaking as she stared down at the makeshift shroud. When she turned back her eyes were wide, disbelieving, her head shaking slightly side to side as she tried to find the words to ask, to demand, information about what had happened to the woman she loved.

So they told her, Danny and LaFontaine taking turns, switching when the sentences of the other became jumbled and misplaced and too strange for the others to understand. They told her everything, and didn’t stop until Danny, with a shaking voice, told the quietly crying girl standing in front of her “You know.”

Day twenty-two they mourned, for what else could they do when the sounds of her cries made anything else impossible?

And on day twenty-two they left that island, escorted by the celebrating Zetas and the Summer Society Sisters, who had successfully fought off whatever the water creature was, making the lake safe twenty-two days late.


End file.
